a birthday dinner for me at the Garrick at the House of Seagram," MIss Walter Club-Storm Jameson, Roald Dahl, said to us, mentioning one of the ten Jennie Bradley, the Paris literary agent, champagnes that had been offered up- and about twenty others. Thomas stairs and were now being served at Mann's widO\ l came over from Zurich. lunch. She's around eighty. Nice party." "It's the first time I've seen Taittin- "Hello, sweetheart," Mrs. Owen ger in a magnum," Mr. Blouet said. said to Dr. Mason Gross, the president "Dr Gross is president of Rutgers, of Rutgers University. and the Wine and Food Society is Mrs Owen followed Dr. Gross to very much engaged in sending the the food bar, which offered smoked Rutgers library a collection of wine salmon and Jambon de Parme as books and menus, both In French well as caviar, and Mr. Knopf @ and in English," YIrs. Owen said. gazed around the room, which Dr. Gross, who had been bend- contained some SIxty men and ing a scholarly eye on the menu, women. asked Miss Paddleford if it was her "One thing," he said to us. "Wine birthday, and she nodded In due course, doesn't improve the looks of ladies- an enormous cake, inscribed "A Hdppy or men, either. I was in on the Wine Birthday Clementine," was trundled In, and F nod Society at its very begin- and all hands rose and rendered the ning here, nearly thirty years ago. It appropriate song. has over four hundred members toddY. We reëncountered lVlr. Knopf out- Y ou raise monsters." side the coatroom, and he looked molli- Mr. Weihman cast a nervous glance fied. a t him. " I ' 1 . ""\ ff K f . d t s one-t llrty, ...V Ir. nop sal. "People have been sitting here an hour. This is the most outrageous way to cut your appetite hefore a meal. Why don't they serve chocolate peppermints on toast? The greatest thing that could Mary Poppzns happen to this countr) would be the abolition of the corporation tax. Expense accounts would vanish, everyone would be on his own, and if someone bought you a five-dollar lunch, you would know he was paying for it." Everybody went downstairs to the Hunt Room fur lunch, and Mr. Knopf said, "1 came late, but I didn't come late enough." There-at a table that included Mrs. Owen; Mr. Blouet; Dr. Gross; Fred Roo7en, managing director of the Hotel New "{ orker; .Miss Susan Walter, rep- resenting the House of Seagram; lVliss Clementine Paddle ford, food editor of the Herald l'1rihune; and Harry L. Lourie, former executive vice-president of Alcoholic Beverage Importers, of Washington-we addressed ourself to a menu that started out with Les Scallops Sauté Noisette and wound up with Le Gâteau Anniversaire ClementIne. :vi rs. Owen read a message from the Founder, who is eighty-five, and turned to Mr. Lourie, at her right. " H ' d 1 . " h . d . ere S to you, ar lng, s e sal , raIs- ing her glass of champagne. "You introduced me to smoked tur- key," Mr. Lourie said gratefully. "How well champagne goes with everything, even breakfast! " "Breakfast especially," Mr. Blouet said. "In France, even the sick drink h " campagne. "We're pushing Perrier J ouet Brut 44 . B EATNIK INTELLIGENCE: A store in Venice, California, IS offering san- dals for dogs. D OES it take an elusive author to produce an elusive literary charac- ter? Mary P oppins, the magical, air- borne slider-up-of-banisters and nanny who is the heroine of five children's I . " M P . " " M P c aSSlCS- ary oppIns, arv op- pins Comes Back," "Mar) Poppins Opens the Door," "Mary Poppins in the Park," and "Mary Poppins from A to Z" -that have been translated into twelve languages, is the creation of a charming, curly-haired lady with a warm smIle, a twinkling eye, a fleet foot, and a marked distaste for personal publicity who signs her books P. L. (for Pamela Lyndon) Travers and would rather not sign them at all. "1 think of myself as Anon.," she said when the wind hlew her our way in the lobby of the Algonquin the other morning. "Anon. is the begetter of all legends. Most fairy tales are Anon., and many poems. I think of Anon all down through the ages as being one person. But my publishers wouldn't let me be Anon. when the first Poppins book came along, in 1934. I feel happier if I can live on the underside of a branch. I want to put myself in the position of listening. Weare all legends-at least when we're dead. Children don't really think that there arc authors behind books. They thInk authors are dead. People often ask me if Mary PoppIns had a model. She didn't. I didn't even think OCTOBER 2, 0, 1 9 G, 2, her up. She just brushed past me and said, 'You take it down.' The late Hen- drik van Loon, who used to take me out to lunch and draw elephants for me, had the right idea. 'How you happened to think of Mary Poppins doesn't in- terest me,' he said 'What interests me is how Mary Poppins happened to think of you.' " We refrained from disturbing the Travers branch, but its 1nhabitant re- warded us with a fact or two. "1 live in Chelsea, in London," she said. "I'm Irish. :\iy family name, Lyndon, is Gaelic. I was born in the north of Australia, in sugar-planting country. My father, whu died wh n 1 was very young-my first great sorrow-was a poet manque, in a way, a mixture of melancholy and gaiety. He was a won- derful earth for a child W e were three little girls. There were long volumes of V\T alter Scott in our house, and I read my mother's lending-library nov- èls when she slept in the afternoons. You could buy a paper-cover book for a penny in Australia. No child can buy a book today; books cost too much. 1 wish someone would bring out books that children could buy with a hot little coin in theIr own hands. My father never eXplained anything to us. Mary Poppins never explains anything. I don't think explaining helps anything. In my third book, Mary Poppins goes away for good; the things that happen In the next two books took place before that. A lit- tle boy wrote me, 'You have sent Mary Poppins awa) again. Madum'- he spelled it 'Madum'-'you should not have done thIS. You have made the children cry.' I felt it was a tribute.. I answered him, 'I'm not surprised. I cried all over my typewrIter.' I get a tremendous mail from children all over the world, and I try to answer every letter. I think if I should ever start to irJ.terpret I should be a little lost. I read my books over and think, How did she ever think of that? I SOme- times roar with laughter at things I've written. I don't mean to be conceited; it's as though I were reading a book hy someone else. Children are so much better than the people who provide their entertainment. I didn't set out to be a writer for children-nobody writes for children, really; you're really writing to make yourself laugh, or yourself cry; if you WrIte for children, you've lost them; you write for the most perceptive and highbrow grownup-but I feel that no place is furnished unless it has children." We forbore to ask for an inventory of the Travers furniture, and its owner went on, "1 was in Trinidad a few years ago, and I was in vited to the local